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Did you ever think...[Graphics]

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For me, the next important step for real immersion is not slightly better textures or physics.

It's actual, true "3D" input, and moving away from "output is on a flat plane in front of you".

The Wii is halfway there on the input front, and we're going to need stupid goggles of some description so I can't see the room around me, and every time I move my head the correct view renders for that line of sight.

Imagine that - looking to your left by physically moving your head there, while pointing the wireless plastic gun thingy you're actually carrying in your arms in the other direction to shoot some mans you saw running up 2 seconds before. With rumble on the gun etc.

That is far more immersive than better textures drawn onto a flat 24" screen (or whatever) in front of you.

I don't think virtual reality will ever happen in that way and many of the industry front runners have said just as much. VR goggles are still just too expensive for your average consumer.

Think about it. More than 50% of consumers out there who played Gears of War 2 did it on an SD TV. So, if around 50% of the people out there haven't yet made the jump to HD, how will Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo push VR goggles on those same consumers?

I think about online play a lot. I mean twenty years ago my dad was using cell phones a foot long and barely knew what the internet was, and today I can connect a cord into the back of my console and play with real live people from all over the world? Sometimes it just blows my mind when I'm playing battlefield with 20 other people all running around and having battles.

I think as computers continue to advance like they have the past three decades, we'll see a lot more "artistic" views than brute force photorealism.

There's a pretty strong "retro" scene with indie programmers, and some big titles like Halo and Team Fortress 2 have leaned away from realism and gone for a more vibrant, illustrated feel. Other titles, such as Mirror's Edge and that new Prince of Persia game, go for a sort of impressionist feel.

A whole bunch of developers will still make their super duper realistic engines, but I think the more fanciful stuff will stick in our minds better.

I think as computers continue to advance like they have the past three decades, we'll see a lot more "artistic" views than brute force photorealism.

There's a pretty strong "retro" scene with indie programmers, and some big titles like Halo and Team Fortress 2 have leaned away from realism and gone for a more vibrant, illustrated feel. Other titles, such as Mirror's Edge and that new Prince of Persia game, go for a sort of impressionist feel.

A whole bunch of developers will still make their super duper realistic engines, but I think the more fanciful stuff will stick in our minds better.

Yeah, I don't think the future is photo-realism, to be honest. I mean, I'm sure there's a market for it and it will be pushed, but I agree that creative uses of technology will flourish; but I'm having a hard time seeing to where. When I play TF2, Prince of Persia, see screens of Borderlands, I just think "man, this is like well drawn comics in motion", and even in those situations it's hard to see how that can really get a lot better.

I don't doubt it will advance, but just like in the past I thought things were the best ever, it's hard to think of how (for me) they will improve upon it.

For me, the next important step for real immersion is not slightly better textures or physics.

It's actual, true "3D" input, and moving away from "output is on a flat plane in front of you".

The Wii is halfway there on the input front, and we're going to need stupid goggles of some description so I can't see the room around me, and every time I move my head the correct view renders for that line of sight.

Imagine that - looking to your left by physically moving your head there, while pointing the wireless plastic gun thingy you're actually carrying in your arms in the other direction to shoot some mans you saw running up 2 seconds before. With rumble on the gun etc.

That is far more immersive than better textures drawn onto a flat 24" screen (or whatever) in front of you.

I don't think virtual reality will ever happen in that way and many of the industry front runners have said just as much. VR goggles are still just too expensive for your average consumer.

Think about it. More than 50% of consumers out there who played Gears of War 2 did it on an SD TV. So, if around 50% of the people out there haven't yet made the jump to HD, how will Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo push VR goggles on those same consumers?

VR isn't going to happen with fancy goggles.

Watch this and tell me it isn't the coolest thing you have seen all day.

I don't think virtual reality will ever happen in that way and many of the industry front runners have said just as much. VR goggles are still just too expensive for your average consumer.

Think about it. More than 50% of consumers out there who played Gears of War 2 did it on an SD TV. So, if around 50% of the people out there haven't yet made the jump to HD, how will Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo push VR goggles on those same consumers?

It's not so long ago that the sort of dedicated 3D rendering hardware and CPU power we have in an everyday games console would have been considered to be "too expensive for the average consumer". It would have been considered the fevered dream of a madman, in fact.

So I'm sorry, but I really disagree with you, mate. There's been no previous market for "VR goggles" because they were ludicrously expensive, and what did you see anyway? About 100 flat-shaded polygons? Just not worth it.

But pretty soon I think it will be both sufficiently cheap and enough of an immersive advance to become not just mainstream, but almost compulsory.

The big problem is finding away to pay the modelers and other artists to make these games. So far even HD console games which far pretty short of Crysis are seemingly not profitable unless you manage to make one of the top selling games of whichever year your game hits in.

I'm starting to think the next big push will be more behind the scenes, reducing the artists/modellers needed to actually generate content. I would think a full body scanner, for example, where you could just have an actor stand and be completely digitized in 3d and ready to have a skeleton put into - or a baseball bat or proton pack could be scanned and immediately used as a 3d object in a game with no real artist input needed would be huge in terms of lowering overall developer costs.

I don't want games to get more realistic. It's already bad enough to shoot mans in Crysis, to choke them to death... I'm not a psychopath, I only kill because they're attacking me. I don't want to fight realistic depictions of people, because soon we will be into murder simulator level graphics.

Now non-violent exploration style games, there's where graphics can shine. Imagine the sort of jungle vista that can only be created digitally?

Also this.

I enjoy my games going for a certain style.

Realism is nice to an extent but what I really love are Rayman 2's fantasy worlds or Jet Set Radio's cel-shaded neo-tokyo setting.

Graphics, right now, the cutting edge stuff, I don't really think it's all that impressive. A lot of games are aimed at the 360/PS3. On those systems, they are kind of irresolute (in screen res), often lacking in draw distance, and the framerate struggles to stay at 30 for the most part.

But when you run them, even on a nice PC, you might get far better framerates and resolution.. but that just makes the low quality models stand out.

Maybe the new Crytek stuff will impress me more. But I saw one of their new tech demos recently (not the newest one), with its fancy radiosity, but I still thought that the way the buildings and structures looked.. seemed very not-realistic. As in, they were clearly bump-mapped textured bricks.

I don't think that normal or parallax mapping is advanced enough yet to be convincing either. I think a lot of stuff looks pretty bad when it relies upon these techniques to give 'texture' to a surface. It's pretty awful when applied to clothing a lot of the time.

Also people still look pretty awful when going for realism this gen. For a lot of reasons.

That's not to say I can't appreciate "good" graphics; what I mean is that we still have a long way to go, and that I think we'll be able to look back on the graphics of today and think that they're pretty meager by tomorrow's standards.

My biggest concern is how development tools are going to be able to try and hold back the great weight of the cost for this stuff. Last gen I pondered the same thing and was told that with advancing graphical power, we'd have advanced toolsets to make more visually complex stuff easier and that it would balance out. And yet, games' development costs are astronomical this gen (for the HD systems) as compared to last gen. "Toolsets" and even middleware hasn't helped enough. Costs went way way way way way up, and toolsets only helped mitigate the cost of development a little bit.

I think the first time I was ever impressed with graphics was when I played Star Fox 64 for the first time

I was like "wow, the cockpit actually looks like a cockpit! the ships actually look like ships! they smoke and explode when they die! awesome!"

The first time I was ever impressed with modern day graphics was when I played Super Smash Bros. Melee for the first time and noticed that Mario's overalls had denim stitching in them, or when I played Luigi's Mansion and marveled at the ghostly/smoky effects present in that game

I've been playing games since around 1980. I really did always think that they would someday get to this point, and further. Never had any other expectations. Didn't know how or when, not claiming to be prescient, just saying that I was sure it would happen.

It's the behavioral stuff that blows my mind. When just for a few moments an AI controlled character does something shockingly human. Those are the moments that are coming more and more frequently and I never really anticipated.

Mortal Kombat, I thought was the most visually amazing game ever back when it was released in the arcades.
I was all like "holyfuckshit they're real people! IT ILIKE IM PLAYING A MOVIE!"

And then shortly after Donky Kong Country came out and I was even more blown away. The "3D" objects like the spinning cranes you had to jump on that held steel beams made me piss my pants in anticipation for the N64.

Then i played Mario 64. Just warping Marios face at the title screen had me sold that "this is the best that games are going to be" and I shortly changed my mind right after playing Resident Evil on the PSone.

And then it was Splinter Cell on PC.

Now, with current gen systems I'm not thinking about this being the best or that being the best. Now I'm thinking "I can't wait to see better than this!"

I want games that have materials that behave like the real world. Screw looking for a soft spot in a brick wall to get through with a hammer, grab a crow bar and smash the door! Games that let you use your own basic survival instincts in terrifying experiences would be awesome. "Oh shit a zombie and I'm stuck in a shed with only a box of old mason jars!" Smash and grind those bad boys into that undeads head until It's hamburger, then run.
When I first booted up Gears of War in HD and seeing Marcus's face I felt giddy just thinking about the future of videogames.

I can't remember the first time I was impressed with graphics.. I think it was... uh... Number Munchers, when it was in 8-bit color instead of monochrome. I thought it looked pretty awesome compared to monochrome Number Munchers.

My biggest concern is how development tools are going to be able to try and hold back the great weight of the cost for this stuff. Last gen I pondered the same thing and was told that with advancing graphical power, we'd have advanced toolsets to make more visually complex stuff easier and that it would balance out. And yet, games' development costs are astronomical this gen (for the HD systems) as compared to last gen. "Toolsets" and even middleware hasn't helped enough. Costs went way way way way way up, and toolsets only helped mitigate the cost of development a little bit.

I figure the guys dumping research into procedural generation are going to be the ones that put a dent in this problem. Procedural content isn't a cure-all, but it can certainly help. Everything from textures to entire cities can be described by mathematical formulas, and with the amount of research going into it there's no way it can avoid becoming commonplace.

This doesn't solve character models or audio creation, but if you can plug some variables into a program and get your game world spit out overnight, you've already saved an assload of money.

Problem with graphics is that most developers are not good artists and resort to cheap tricks such as filters or excessive bloom to achieve a "feel" or look. Compare for example, STALKER, which makes use of realistic lighting and effects to Fallout 3, which throws up a grey filter and adds some bloom.

Graphics are important, but not how advanced they are, just how well they are used.

So where are we going with graphics? What is the next step, because it's gonna get pretty damn hard to get more realistic.

Bigger effects at better performance!

But it's true we're at a lower incline right now. Sequels that look the same and released on the same console are a lot more common than before. They look good enough and dev expenses are already high. Probably going to remain at that enjoyable (for them) road for a while. Which may in turn be enjoyable for the customer when the devs need to excel in other areas than NEW GRAPHIX!!! like story.

In terms of realism there is also quite a way to go. But it requires shitload of performance improvements. Maybe Ray Tracing might take off and we can marvel at its reflection glory. Rasterization will always remain smoke and mirrors. Bloom being exceptionally lazy smoke and mirror like poster above mentioned.

Problem with graphics is that most developers are not good artists and resort to cheap tricks such as filters or excessive bloom to achieve a "feel" or look. Compare for example, STALKER, which makes use of realistic lighting and effects to Fallout 3, which throws up a grey filter and adds some bloom.

Graphics are important, but not how advanced they are, just how well they are used.

Because of this, I still think Conker's BFD N64 looks better than the Xbox version.

I'm probably one of the biggest crysis fanboys on this forum, but the game that still stays with me as the biggest graphical WOW was COMI. Shiny 3D graphics are great when they first come out, but most of them age quickly and end up being a lot less impressive only a couple years later. Amazing, hand drawn 2D graphics on the other hand still look amazing a decade later.

I think the first time I was ever impressed with graphics was when I played Star Fox 64 for the first time

I was like "wow, the cockpit actually looks like a cockpit! the ships actually look like ships! they smoke and explode when they die! awesome!"

The first time I was ever impressed with modern day graphics was when I played Super Smash Bros. Melee for the first time and noticed that Mario's overalls had denim stitching in them, or when I played Luigi's Mansion and marveled at the ghostly/smoky effects present in that game

I never really thought graphics would get better than that

For me Luigi's Mansion was all about the cloth simulation. If you tried to vacuum up a tablecloth it'd react accordingly.

Keep in mind that as the complexity of the visuals go up, so does the cost for manufacturing a game.

We have pretty much reached the point where that is a barrier for small development teams, so if we are to surpass this generation effectively, we need to focus much more on the programming side of things and less on the artistic.

What I mean by this is that things need to get procedural. Think SpeedTree but for everything. Procedural textures, animations, and particles. Yes, spore did this, and its a good first step in the right direction.

You may think a field of grass where every blade is independently modeled and imbued with physics is difficult to produce, and by the standards of todays technology you would be right.

However, if a person or a group of people designed a algorithm to mimic the procedural generation of grass over terrain with a few important variables, suddenly it becomes feasible. Of course you would need a graphics card powerful enough to render it, but that comes easily with moores law.

We can have all the realism we want, it just takes intelligent software.

I think the first time I was ever impressed with graphics was when I played Star Fox 64 for the first time

I was like "wow, the cockpit actually looks like a cockpit! the ships actually look like ships! they smoke and explode when they die! awesome!"

The first time I was ever impressed with modern day graphics was when I played Super Smash Bros. Melee for the first time and noticed that Mario's overalls had denim stitching in them, or when I played Luigi's Mansion and marveled at the ghostly/smoky effects present in that game

I never really thought graphics would get better than that

For me Luigi's Mansion was all about the cloth simulation. If you tried to vacuum up a tablecloth it'd react accordingly.

I was totally lttp with HL2 and didn't get it till orange box; but even then I was blown away and I loaded it up and played through start to finish that same day I bought it.

HL2 is a great example because from a purely technical standpoint it's not terribly impressive. Even when it came out it wasn't the best graphics out there and most of the textures are somewhat bland. But the design is top notch and draws you in, making the game far more compelling and immersive than it might have been in the hands of a different developer with the same, or a better, game engine.